I suppose we all, those of us who write in verse or prose, have the
habitual feeling that we should like to be remembered. It is to be awake
when all of those who were round us have been long wrapped in slumber.
It is a pleasant thought enough that the name by which we have been
called shall be familiar on the lips of those who come after us, and the
thoughts that wrought themselves out in our intelligence, the emotions
that trembled through our frames, shall live themselves over again in the
minds and hearts of others.
But is there not something of rest, of calm, in the thought of gently and
gradually fading away out of human remembrance? What line have we
written that was on a level with our conceptions? What page of ours that
does not betray some weakness we would fain have left unrecorded? To
become a classic and share the life of a language is to be ever open to
criticisms, to comparisons, to the caprices of successive generations, to
be called into court and stand a trial before a new jury, once or more
than once in every century. To be forgotten is to sleep in peace with
the undisturbed myriads, no longer subject to the chills and heats, the
blasts, the sleet, the dust, which assail in endless succession that
shadow of a man which we call his reputation. The line which dying we
could wish to blot has been blotted out for us by a hand so tender, so
patient, so used to its kindly task, that the page looks as fair as if it
had never borne the record of our infirmity or our transgression.
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